i can absolutely, positively show you people like this...living in groups, even. start here... www.thesimpleway.org. Read "The Irresistible Revolution" if you get a chance. locally, in houston, i can introduce you to folks who live out following jesus christ in the way you speak of. not people who are perfect..but people who are legitimately seeking to live like you're talking about.
you should say rhester..not MadMax. i'm a hypocrite who loves hanging out with people like rhester hoping some of it might rub off.
There are people like this out there, MadMax always comes to mind. Unfortunately, these types of behaviors and qualities are just one side of Christianity, cherry-picked, if you will. People tend to gloss over the less than ideal, morally abhorrent stuff Jesus and the Bible command of us. So, when these people call themselves Christians, I feel really bad for them, because while they're genuinely great people who are a great benefit to this world, they really deserve a better religion that is truly representative of who they are.
Ah, thanks for bumping the thread. I don't know why, I hate being the LAST ONE to respond in a thread Hopefully I won't be a thread-ender again.
Welp, for starters, if I'm a Christian, I can own slaves. Which Jesus endorses, as long as I don't beat them as to injure their teeth or eyes.
scripture? i don't think you're going to find Jesus commenting directly on the institution of slavery. (that's the biblical equivalent of asking for a link!!! :grin: ) and yes, i'm going to do this with smilies and the implicit understanding between us that you've become one of my favorite posters here. too much personal crap gets thrown out on this board. the starting place is that i already respect you. -- just to be clear.
No need to clarify, I wouldn't doubt for a moment that was where you were starting from. I can give you exact scripture references later, but for now I'll do the fastfood version of linking and just hook it up with wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_and_slavery You're going to find Jesus' tacit endorsement of these laws, without direct reference. Kind of like when your Dad tells you something, and then you ask Mom and she says "Whatever your father said." It's not saying "Yes I approve of X" explicitly, it's just this kind of lazy catch-all.
The NT references are to Paul. Wiki points out they've been used by slaveholders and abolitionists alike to justify their points. I would point out (as Wiki does)...and I think this is MOST important...that slaveholders are among those listed by Paul in First Timothy as those who are specifcally said to be condemned. I think that is the context that all of Paul's quotes with respect to slavery has to be read within. I don't see him patting slavery on the back...I see him telling all humanity that we are to be slaves to others....subjugating ourselves and serving other beings...whether you're trapped in the institution of slavery or not. But to read those verses without the context of him condemning slave traders just doesn't make sense to me. I'm not sure how much clearer Paul can be then literally condemning slave traders. I just have a difficult time reading Jesus...seeing the humility with which he lived....and seeing any theology spring from that which would support something so dehumanizing. Of course people are free to read it differently. I just see a radical, ridiculous love that makes self last and others first. I don't see how that would comport with a worldview in support an institution like slavery at all. Picking nits with this verse or that is fine...and fundamentalists love that stuff. But it misses the point entirely, from my view.
Its not just religion. Its ANY cultural norm of the past 50 years faces skepticism. There's lots of cultural norms have religious connections to them, so questioning a cultural norm with seemingly no religious affiliation can directly or indirectly affect religion anyway. I do agree there seems more of the "Get that pesky religion out of the way" sentiment. It does appear people are trying to "bust open the floodgates" to do things their way cuz to them the old way "didnt work". And it cant be overlooked that the INTERNET itself allows for much more info so it'd appear we're getting inundated with constant message for change. 9/11 perhaps accelerated it. I think that originally started post-atomic bomb World War 2 and the Cold War.
Also Max, you can kill your kid if they talk back to you. Might come in handy if your son ever thinks about becoming a Texans fan. (Just saying, spare him a lot of misery)
He's already a Texans fan, so too late. Crap! There was a lot of discussion of whether to include the OT at all in the Bible. There was thought that it would confuse people...there was thought that it would bring context to understand Jesus through. I've never met a Christian who reads Leviticus and applies it literally to their lives. Jesus brings this whole New Covenant thing that extends past ritual and religion. There's lots of talk about that in the letter to the Hebrews especially. FranchiseBlade said this in the Jesus thread today: "I will say that most people who argue against the religion seem to take the most fundamentalist interpretation of that religion." I find this to be true as well, but it's completely not my faith.
Think of what it was like after the plague. About 1/3 of the population dies out, and the Pope stays inside so he doesn't get sick. Yeah, that might cause you to question some things.
Nope, you ARE a Jesus freak, hypocrites like to tell other people what they are doing wrong, Jesus freaks talk alot about Jesus and what he does well. I mess up God cleans up, I just think God is ...well like Jesus... rocketsjudoka is a ninja Christian at heart, just thinks he has to get all religous to believe, no, my friend rocketsjudoka the force is with you... believe, believe, believe, believe, believe, (are my jedi powers working?)
For the Europeans, it was the Lisbon Earthquake, with it's horrors challenging Leibniz's notion that this was the best of all possible worlds.
I don't disagree with you. I'm just saying that the word ideology MAY now be unfairly linked only to religion, leaving out other 'groups of people with common ideas/ideals who congregate and would like to advance their own goals' out of the criticism. If you take a look at this post from Tschmal, you'll see that the version of atheism is extremely ideological: There is almost a quasi-ideology that says "Atheism is the truth. I will try to advance it in society by discussing it with friends, voting for any kind of secularization in my country, and you will only see the truth through atheism if you have faith that atheism is not an ideology. Everyone else is wrong. To understand more about this, you should follow the teachings of (for example) Darwin and Dawkins." Obviously, I'm not trying to derive all this from the one post, I'm just giving an example and working with it. Really all that's missing from it is God, heaven, and hell. But those are not mandatory components of ideology. Those are not even mandatory components of religion. What the quasi-ideology I described in the above paragraph does contain is prophets, disciples, forbidding people from worshipping them, a methodology for good/bad morality, law/sharia, groups congregating for a common purpose, people individually acting on that same purpose, sects, branches, predictions of the future based on current knowledge, etc. To be very clear, I don't care. It doesn't make a difference to me, and I don't think it makes a difference to them how they are labelled. I'm also not so blind to see that, even if atheism was classed as an ideology, it is far less ideological than religion. Religion is one of the most stringent ideologies we know. But then is democracy an ideology? Capitalism? Communism? Socialism? I'm really not trying to attack anyone. Just asking questions and offering views trying to clarify the concept of "ideology" in my own head. My own personal wish is to delineate everyone from group ideology and shift them towards individual ideology and I'm not convinced that atheism is free of those shackles, or if it's even possible for an ideology to ever be free of them.
Atheism is more probable, though equally unprovable. Atheism, though less personally satisfying, reduces the conflicts between people by not requiring the rabid defense of a dogma to maintain the omnipotence of the deity. Atheism sets the stage for a humanist ideology by removing the dictates of a supernatural power and recognizing that humans (the only sentient entities we know exist) are responsible for the morality, social welfare, advancement of ideas, stewardship of the planet and the preservation of life as we know it. Because if we don't, the sum total of our existence will be to suffer a hell hole on Earth until we are snuffed out as an insignificant pimple on the universe's ass. And no one anywhere will give a shait. Humanism is the ideology, Atheism just assigns the responsibility directly to people instead of a proxy. Ubiquitous information will be the mechanism for universal consensus. You can already see a a standardized set of acceptable behavior within Clutchfans. You see it in the organized rebellions for freedom in Africa, popular entertainment where democratic votes determine winners, world wide punditry. Ubiquitous information is the great equalizer of egalitarianism, and the mechanism of meritocracy. If it is there and free for everyone then exceptionalism will be determined by you do with it. I know you guys never buy my theory of Entropy in social systems but as every individual becomes more equal. there is more stability within the system. It less likely for power (energy potential) to be concentrated. No one gets together to sing "There is no God". People do come together to sing " This is our only shot at life, let's work together to make it something positive'. (I think it was Canned Heat) <iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/tu8Rx4zz-3U" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Equal things fall under Pareto distributions where 20% has 80% of the wealth/concentration/attention/progress. Some of that comes out of natural luck. Other times, those 20% really do work harder than the other 80 combined. The web, which is fairly free and uncontrolled, is dominated by those top 20% websites. So making everything free and self-determined would be the simplest route from the top down, but it'd likely trend to a natural distribution of haves dominating the have nots. An equally impossible goal would be to advance and maintain the average...the middle class. It's slightly different in the sense that the means to accomplish this would have to change and adapt over time. Thinking one system fits all circumstances will end in dogmatic disaster. It also means that if I had a choice over complete freedom or a stable and vibrant middle class that's over a 3/5 of a country's population, I'd likely choose the latter. The net has made companies more productive, but has it made the public as a whole more equal or more demanding?
